The value of consciousness: experiences worth having.
Léa Moncoucy, Krzysztof Dołęga, Catherine Tallon-Baudry, Axel Cleeremans
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences November 13, 2025 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2024.0303 via PubMed
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractPhenomenal experience—what it feels like to be an organism—has intrinsic value that cannot be reduced to evolutionary cost-benefit calculations. While all organisms act for reasons shaped by extrinsic evolutionary pressures, some also act for reasons of their own, sometimes even in ways detrimental to their survival. This shift marks a fundamental change in nature: subjective experience broadens an organism's capacity to act not merely in response to objective evolutionary value but also according to preference-driven subjective value associated with items, situations, events, or other agents. Subjective value can serve both as a driver of behavior and as a target for behavior, making it irreducible to extrinsic forms of value.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Adaptive signalling Evolution Intrinsic value Phenomenal consciousness Subjective experience |
| Citations | 5 |
| Key finding | Phenomenal experience has intrinsic value that cannot be reduced to extrinsic evolutionary value, because subjective value can act as both a driver and a target for behavior. |
Abstract
DC. Dennett (2020,personal communication) asked: 'How do we go from doing things for reasons to having reasons for doing things?'. This question targets a fundamental shift in nature: while all organisms act in the way they do for reasons that are shaped by extrinsic evolutionary cost functions, some also act for reasons of their own, even engaging in behaviour that may be detrimental to their own existence. For such organisms, we argue, phenomenal experience-what it feels like-has intrinsic value. Here, we elaborate on the perspective developed by Axel Cleeremans and Catherine Tallon-Baudry (Cleeremans, Tallon-Baudry 2022 Neurosci. Conscious, 2022, niac007. (doi:10.1093/nc/niac007)) and defend the claim that phenomenal experience broadens an organism's ability to act in a manner that is not merely responsive to the objective value of an extrinsic evolutionary cost function but is also shaped by the preference-driven subjective value associated with items, situations, events or other agents. Importantly, we argue that the intrinsic value of subjective experience cannot always be reduced to other forms of extrinsic values, because subjective value can act not only as a driver of behaviour, but also as a target for behaviour.This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolutionary functions of consciousness'.